The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) system allows hard drive manufacturers to increase areal density of hard disk drive (HDD) platters by making tracks narrower and track pitch smaller than they are today. While it is possible to minimize a writer (a portion of an HDD's head that writes data), reading data can be challenging as tracks become narrower. For example, as tracks become narrower, the tracks start to affect each other causing inter-track interference (ITI), which makes it increasingly difficult for readers (portions of the HDD's heads that read data) to perform read operations. To mitigate ITI resulting from very narrow tracks, the TDMR system uses an array of heads to read data from either one or several neighboring tracks. This improves the signal-to-noise ratio of signals provided to an HDD controller (HDC). Using several readers allows the HDC to determine the correct data based on inputs received from several locations on the HDD's platters.